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Category Archives: Bitcoin Cash

XBT Provider AB planned on launching an exchange-traded product (ETP) in the form of a cryptocurrency basket last year but backed out because one of those cryptocurrencies spoiled the party. Can you guess which one?

As suggested by a report from Bloomberg, XBT CEO Laurent Kssis “didn’t have a clue” about the potential for a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork — which happened late last year — despite getting the green light from Swedish regulators to launch a cryptocurrency ETP. He told the privately held financial, software, data, and media company:

It’s important to ask how the community is responding to the split and who’s going to support one asset versus the other. If we get it wrong, these assets will drop and if they’re part of the basket we can’t go back because it’s in the final term-sheet.

Though Kssis never explicitly mentions Bitcoin Cash as the culprit, one can put two and two together. The altcoin experienced a high-profile ideological split in Q4 2018 when the community took sides between Bitcoin Cash Satoshi’s Vision (SV) and Bitcoin Cash ABC.

The confusion was largely blamed for pushing the price of Bitcoin (BTC) down below yearly support in dramatic fashion — though one might argue that it was heading down anyway.

Hard forks are indicative of some of the primary issues in cryptos pressuring prices. The overall issue is rapidly increasing crypto supply and negative signals for potential institutional investors of how still nascent the market is.

In even simpler terms, McGlone’s statement could be interpreted as one which claims investors outside of the cryptocurrency industry have no idea why there are so many “Bitcoins” in the first place.

It’s not an easy task to explain to someone how Bitcoin Cash was originally created because some people in the community thought it was more in line with Satoshi Nakamoto’s real vision for peer-to-peer electronic cash, but then that sub-community had an apparent disagreement over what Satoshi Nakamoto’s real vision for peer-to-peer electronic cash actually was — and that one of those people actually claims he is (or “was”) Satoshi Nakamoto.

At the end of the day, if you don’t know enough about cryptocurrencies to know that Bitcoin Cash might hardfork at an all-but-planned date, you probably shouldn’t be offering it in a basket of digital assets to institutional investors.

What do you think about XBT’s putting the breaks on its cryptocurrency ETP? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Bitcoin has been forked to spawn more than 40 Bitcoin-branded altcoins in its history, and many remain completely unknown, new data published this week reveals.

Bitcoin Forks Surged At Price All-Time High

Compiled by cryptocurrency data analytics firm DataLight and uploaded to social media January 29, the summary sheds light on a host of altcoins which split off from the Bitcoin network at various points beginning in 2015.

Names include Bitcoin X, Bitcoin Red and Bitcoin All, familiar coins such as Bitcoin Diamond and Bitcoin Gold, along with more unusual entries such as Bitcoin Ore, Bitcoin Uranium, and Bitcoin God.

A total of almost 50 spinoff forks currently make up the tally, with DataLight noting that December 2017 – the month in which the Bitcoin price 00 reached its all-time highs – sparked 19 such forks.

“None of them became widely adopted,” the company adds.

In fact, the surge in BTC price at the end of 2017 appears to coincide with the emergence of new Bitcoin-branded forks.

Fork Me Once…

As Bitcoinistreported, the advent of the first wave of Bitcoin forks in 2017 received major publicity.

Coming four months after Bitcoin Cash, arguably the best-known Bitcoin fork, names such as Bitcoin Diamond and Bitcoin Gold failed to achieve credibility in the eyes of the industry. Commentators at the time accused development teams of simply trying to capitalize on the process to ‘create money out of thin air.’

Bitcoin God, which also appeared in late 2017, was intended as a parody of the situation along the lines of Useless Ethereum Token, which had earlier mocked the ICO craze.

For those forks that have in some way endured, questions still remain as to their true purpose or unique selling point.

Sharing the DataLight piece, veteran trader Tone Vays said he was taken aback by the scale of hard fork activity on the Bitcoin network. He added:

We all know that (Bitcoin Cash) (aka (BCash)) was the big one (and) has now split into (Bitcoin ABC) and (Bitcoin SV) but how different are they from the other 40+ on this ever-growing list?

What do you think about the number of Bitcoin forks? Have they strengthened or weakened Bitcoin? Let us know in the comments below!

Cool Vs. Dumpster Hot Air

In a Twitter discussion with cryptocurrency commentator and entrepreneur Tuur Demeester December 25, Buterin debated the pros and cons of two algorithms used by many cryptocurrencies: Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

As part of its long-term upgrade schedule, Ethereum plans to transfer from PoW to PoS, with Buterin saying he “doesn’t believe” in the former.

BSV, which plans to use giant block sizes to solve scaling difficulties ‘on chain,’ has faced technical and publicity hurdles since it came into being on November 15.

The altcoin unwittingly became collateral damage from the debate after an advocate requested Buterin’s opinion on it.

The user had claimed the scaling plans from Bitcoin (BTC) developers – specifically ‘off-chain’ scaling via the Lightning Network, was a “joke.”

Buterin slickly disagreed.

“I have my disagreements with the bitcoin roadmap, PoW, etc but they’re trying to do something that’s genuinely cool tech,” he responded.

“BSV is a pure dumpster fire.”

Yeah no, I have my disagreements with the bitcoin roadmap, PoW, etc but they're trying to do something that's genuinely cool tech. BSV is a pure dumpster fire.

“Have a nice life. You will now discover me when pissed off,” he wrote.

BCH, BSV and ETH have meanwhile all staged something of an unlikely recovery over the past week. BCH had led the rally, more than doubling in value to hit more than $200 before correcting nearer to $170. ETH managed $160 from a low of $73.

Do you agree with Vitalik Buterin’s comments? Let us know in the comments below!

Bitcoinist spoke with Bitcoin Cash advocate and owner of Bitcoin.com, Roger Ver, about the BCH ‘hash war,’ his controversial website branding of Bitcoin (BTC) as ‘Bitcoin Core,’ and why he believes Bitcoin developers are “economically illiterate.”

Bitcoinist: Bitcoin Cash just went thru a ‘hash war’ with Craig Wright/Ayre splitting off to a new chain called Bitcoin Cash SV. Can you share your reflections on the recent hard fork?

Roger Ver: Craig and I don’t have any disagreement. It seems strange that the media is trying to frame it that way.

What developments does Bitcoin Cash have in the pipeline now? What are you most excited about?

I’m most excited about oracle.bitcoin.com that will be launching in full soon. It will result in censorship resistant exchanges, sports betting and much more. I’m also very excited about our Coin Shuffle privacy tool coming to the Bitcoin.com wallet very soon.

Is Bitcoin Cash open to a Lightning Network type of scaling solution, sidechains etc. in the future?

I’ve never been opposed to any of those things. In fact, I’ve provided more funding for both Lightning and Side Chains than just about anyone else. I’m only opposed to the insane BTC block space production quota still being advocated for by a bunch of economically ignorant software engineers who need to pick up an economics book.

Given your commerce adoption focus, how interested are merchants in accepting BCH right now? Why? How many currently accept BCH worldwide?

Obviously, they are very interested as shown by the fact that Bitpay has provided full support for BCH on their platform. More than 100,000 websites are currently accepting BCH, and likely more physical shops are accepting BCH than BTC now.

Many Bitcoin proponents argue that Satoshi’s anonymity and disappearance give it an advantage over other coins that have known founders or de facto community leaders. Do you agree? In this sense, is Bitcoin Cash at a disadvantage since many would consider Roger Ver a leader of sorts given your popularity?

I reject the premise. I didn’t start BCH, and I’m not the leader. I’m just one of many users although I may be louder than most.

Bitcoin Core believes that Bitcoin's goal is to become digital gold.

Bitcoin Cash believes that Bitcoin's goal is to become a global currency.

You recently stated that “Bitcoin Core believes that Bitcoin’s goal is to become digital gold. Bitcoin Cash believes that Bitcoin’s goal is to become a global currency.“ But Satoshi wrote that Bitcoin is “more typical of a precious metal.” Why do you prioritize adoption in commerce over SoV? Doesn’t this also run counter to the evolution of money stages as a collectible->store of value->currency->unit of account?

I reject the evolution of money cycle that you have laid out. Money is simply the most commonly accepted barter good. The dollar is the world’s most popular store of value because you can spend it anywhere. If Bitcoin had been allowed to continue to be spendable anywhere, it could have become the world’s most popular store of value.

Instead, the economically ignorant BTC camp have intentionally undermined BTC’s usefulness in commerce and unwittingly undermined its usefulness as a store of value.

I laid it out in detail very clearly in this video that has aged very well.

Your website Bitcoin dot com states: “Buy Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin Core (BTC) with a credit card.” Critics say you are intentionally mislabeling BTC as Bitcoin Core, the name of the Bitcoin software client, to get new users to buy BCH. There have also been reports of people wanting to buy BTC but mistakenly buying BCH instead. How do you respond?

BCH has more Bitcoin-ness about it than BTC, so it doesn’t make sense to call BTC Bitcoin. The website is labeled very clearly, and we have never had a single report from an actual customer making a mistake.

BTC fees have been at the lowest in years this year. Moreover, on October 16, a Bitcoin user moved 29,999 BTC worth $194 million with a $0.1 fee. Why do you state, based on your recent tweets, that Bitcoin (BTC) has “full blocks” and “high fees”?

By intentional design of the “Core Developers”, they want Bitcoin to have high fees and full blocks. If the fees are currently low, then they are failing at what they have set out to accomplish. Either way, they are incompetent.

BCH price is currently at record-lows in USD and BTC terms and down over 96% from all-time highs. What’s the reason? Hash war? Lack of adoption? Overall bearish crypto market? A combination of factors?

Obviously, it is a combination of factors. The market is made up of millions of participants with their own needs, desires, and goals.

Do you hold more BCH than BTC?

Of course. BTC’s future is dim with the misguided economic code being promoted.

BTC traders were concentrating on one metric in particular this week as Bitcoin price slowly slides towards $3000.

Bitcoin’s ‘All Over’ Scenario

The largest cryptocurrency had recovered from fifteen-month lows over the weekend around $3130 to trade around $3200 at press time December 17.

In the short term, however, the situation could deteriorate exponentially, veteran trading guru Tone Vays warned in his latest market update Sunday.

Vays, who had previously correctly forecast BTC/USD’s drop to between $3000 and $3500, now singled out the 50-month moving average Bitcoin price 00 as a determining factor for the future.

With the pair now hovering just above that average, a reversal must come to keep Bitcoin in line with its historical behavior, having tested the barrier twice before.

Conversely, a full candle below would spell a run down to $1300, Vays describing it as being “all over.”

“We have crossed the 50-month moving average twice before but never closed below it; I pray to God we don’t close below it because if we do, shit gets bad,” he summarized bluntly.

…The moment we can close below the moving average and have a full candle below the moving average, it’s all over; we’re going to $1300 and hopefully not lower.

Technical Strength Keeps Building

Analyzing weekly chart behavior, Vays said the 200-week moving average, which had likewise not seen a full red candle open and close below it before, could also represent a watershed moment.

“…Let’s hope it holds but I’m not very optimistic,” he added.

Cryptocurrency markets had broadly steadied over the weekend, with some assets gaining 1-2 percentage points to stem losses which had seen many reach 18-month lows.

The two strands of Bitcoin Cash (BCH and SV), which continue to fight a hostile publicity and hash rate war, likewise modestly improved, despite the legacy chain still trading at its lowest ever (BCH) price 00 in both USD and BTC terms since inception in August last year.

In February, Charlie Lee predicted a ‘flappening’ of Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash before the end of the year. Well, with just two weeks of the year left, the prediction came true, as Litecoin’s market cap overtook Bitcoin Cash.

Natural Rivals

In many ways, Bitcoin Cash was always a more natural competitor to Litecoin than to Bitcoin. From its conception, it tried to address several perceived shortfalls of Bitcoin, that Litecoin tried to fill years earlier.

Both allow faster transactions and confirmations, aimed squarely at the retail sector to encourage adoption for smaller payments. This is one area of utility that Bitcoin has traditionally struggled with, although the development of Lightning Network is trying to redress this balance.

While Litecoin had a head-start in terms of being first to market, Bitcoin Cash had the weight of Bitcoin branding. It also didn’t hurt that the entire Bitcoin user-base suddenly found themselves with some, after the 2017 fork.

Two Ways To Pluck A Chicken

Litecoin advocates have long waited for a ‘flappening’ (combining ‘flippening’ with Lee’s ‘Chikun’ nickname), creating a website monitoring the situation. By many metrics, Litecoin has always been ahead of BCH, but in most eyes (and notably those of CoinMarketCap), the key figure is… well, market cap.

While most assumed that an overtake would occur through gains in LTC price 00, ultimately other forces were at play. Indeed, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee took complained in September about third parties “artificially” suppressing Litecoin price.

Whether or not this was true turned out to be a moot point. In the end, it was the (un)civil hash-war following the recent hard-fork, that did it for Bitcoin Cash. The steady hemorrhaging of BCH value [coion_price coin=bitcoin-cash] eventually brought the market cap below that of its rival.

The Flappening Effect

The internet and Twitterverse, in general, seemed generally very pleased, congratulating creator Charlie Lee for the achievement. But the ‘flappening’ also had another side effect.